Probe Into NJ Jihadists Started With Tip on FBI Website

new-jerseyBy Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

The FBI had been tracking two suspected New Jersey jihadists since 2006 after getting a tip on its website, the Newark Star-Ledger reported.

“Every time they access the internet, all they look for is all those terrorist videos about the Islam holly war and where they kill U.S. soldiers and other terrible things …,” the tip said. “They keep saying that Americans are their enemies, that everybody other than Islamic followers are their enemies, and they all must be killed.”

Earlier this month, the two men Mohamed Hamoud Alessa, 20, and Eduardo Almonte, 26, were arrested at JFK Airport on charges of being jihadists who were going to Somalia to join up with a radical group and kill American soldiers.

The paper reported that in 2006 and 2007  “there was a serious debate inside the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security & Preparedness about the seriousness of the threat posed by the two young men, according to those interviewed for this story.”

Then authorities learned the men had taken a trip to Jordan in 2007, the paper reported.

“We were trying to figure out was it serious or was it just rhetoric. Some of us were saying they thought these guys were just talk. But they had already taken a trip,” a law enforcement source told the Star-Ledger. “We heard about that after the fact. That was what really got the Bureau’s attention.”

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